This article was written by Giovanni Zappavigna, co-owner of Expose Gaming
These are the classics, the original Pokémon video games. Without these two titles we’d have none of the Pokémon related games we have today. Pokémon Red and Blue were originally released in Japan as Pocket Monsters: Red & Green, they are role-playing games (RPGs), developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo.
In Japan only two versions of the game were released, these being the Red and Green versions which we mentioned earlier. Later on, they decide to release a special version called Pokémon Blue.
The North American version was released on September 28, 1998…feel old yet…because I do!
3 years later the game was release in Europe and Australia as well.
In both versions of the game, you control a young boy, looking at him from an overhead perspective, which in 1998 was new and innovative. The goal of this game is to become the best Pokémon trainer in all of the Kanto region. In order to complete this epic quest, you will have to complete numerous tasks and explore the world.
Your first task is creating your team of 6 Pokémon. You do this by hunting them in tall grass or caves and capturing them to create a team! When your team is created you will have to level up your Pokémon by fighting other trainers and wild Pokémon too.
Your second task is to defeat the 8 gym leaders and collect their badges, you need these to enter the Pokémon League, this is where the real challenge awaits.
Here’s a small list of the gym leaders:
- Brock, the rock type expert
- Misty, the water type expert
- L.T. Surge, the electric type expert
- Erika, the grass type expert
- Sabrina, the psychic type expert
- Koga, the poison type expert
- Baine, the fire type expert
- Giovanni, the rock type expert
When you’ve accomplished that difficult task, another more challenging one awaits you.
Once you’ve obtained the eight different badges you will be able to enter the Pokémon league, where four incredibly powerful Pokémon trainers await you (they are known as the Elite Four).
These Pokémon masters are on a different level than the gym leaders, and they all specialize in one type of Pokémon.
Here is a list of the Elite Four
- Lorelei, the ice type master
- Bruno, the fighting type master
- Agatha, the ghost type master
- Lance, the dragon type master
As a final task, after defeating the eight gym leaders and the Elite Four, you will have to face the League Champion. Your most challenging opponent of all!
Another fun objective you can complete is to catch all of the 150 Pokémon. Some Pokémon have specific things you need to do in order to catch them. Some of them are only available in the Red version of the game and some are only available in the Blue version.
To get all of them you’ll need a friend with the other version and a Game Link Cable so you can trade any Pokémon that aren’t available in your version of the game. Some Pokémon actually need to be traded in order to evolve, so you’ll need a friend you can trade them to, and he can then trade them back to you after they’ve evolved.
It’s hard to compare Pokémon to another games because it’s unique in its genre. The fighting system in Pokémon is similar to other RPGs, a turn by turn battle until all the trainer’s Pokémon have fainted.
How does a battling work? It’s a 1 vs 1 battle, both trainers choose an opening attack for their Pokémon, the one with the most speed will attack first. Depending on the type of Pokémon your opponent has, and the type of attack you decide to use, your attack can either be very effective, effective, or have absolutely no effect against the other Pokémon.
The goal is to defeat all of the enemy’s Pokémon.
Unlike other RPGs where you have 1-4 main characters, in Pokémon you have 150 main characters. As you can choose from all the Pokémon in the game! You can only have 6 at any one time, but you can easily switch them out in any Pokémon center, which is an awesome unique feature the creators added in.
As you advance in the game you will have to catch Pokémon, you don’t necessarily need to catch them, but it can definitely benefit you in the long run by giving you access to better and more powerful fighters.
The easiest way to catch a Pokémon is by depleting his health bar to a sliver by using one of your trained Pokémon to attack him. You can also inflict status effects on them to make it easier for you to capture them, such as: paralyze, sleep or freeze. If you look up to the second picture above you can see that the Eevee has ‘PAR’ under its name, this means that it’s paralyzed.
When all of this is done it’s time to go into your “Item” menu and choose a Pokeball you want to use. Whether your catch attempt will be successful is based on a couple of factors:
- The health of the Pokémon (relative to its full health)
- The type of Poké Ball (some are more powerful than others)
- Any status condition of the wild Pokémon
Even after doing all of the above there’s some chance the Pokeball will break and you need to try again.
I’d recommend having a team of 6 different types of Pokémon. This will help you greatly on your adventure since the gym leaders and the elite four are experts in a certain type.
Another great thing about this games is TMs and HMs. TMs stands for Technical Machine, these resemble CDs, and each of them offers a different move you can teach to your Pokémon, they can be very useful. HMs are similar but there are some differences. HMs stands for Hidden Machine, here are some of the differences between TMs and HMs
- The moves cannot be overridden by simply learning another move
- The moves can be used outside of battle after obtaining the relevant gym badge
- The HM can be used multiple times without breaking
Overall, Pokémon is an awesome game, I’d recommend it to any RPG fans out there, one of the first RPGs I ever played and it made me fall in love with the series, I’m 27 years old today and I still buy the new games they release nowadays. I can’t wait for my son to be old enough so I can introduce him to this masterpiece.
Giovanni Zappavigna is the co-owner of Expose Gaming. You can follow them on twitter at @ExposureGaming8.
Relevant Pokémon Red & Blue Auctions from eBay
Water Bottle Pokemon Vintage Blue Red
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